


Factory Ghosts

by JackOfNone



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 01:50:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackOfNone/pseuds/JackOfNone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Celes and Terra's memories of each other are uneven: three times when the lives of a girl and a general intersected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Factory Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lirillith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/gifts).



For a while, Celes had heard rumors. Never anything specific — not that many people would tell a child anything specific, even the sort of child who had very powerful men telling her every single day that she was going to be a general some day. Despite understanding that she had a certain amount of importance, Celes knew that she was not the sort of important that meant anyone explained anything to her. She was the kind of important that meant a lot of people were invested in having her do what she was told.

The rumors spoke of a monster that the Emperor himself had brought back from a far-off land. Celes knew about the monsters — they kept them in tubes in the research facility. Once, she had wandered off while visiting Cid in his lab and seen a humanoid creature with horns and hooves, eyes open to slivers and glowing like embers. It had pawed the glass when she came near, and she had never told anyone about it.

  
This monster, they said, was different. It looked human, the guards whispered to themselves when they thought no one else could hear. It looked so much like a little girl, they said. The women who tended the steam boilers in the basement of the factory wiped the grime from their face with their kerchiefs and entertained each other with their brief glimpses of the Emperor's miracle child.

_Face of an angel, she had. Innocent as a lamb, with a big grin. If it weren't for that hair she'd look like any little city girl out climbing rooftops in the rain._

_Oh, but I saw her too. I can't say much -- 'twas something I ought not to have seen -- but she made a little paper crane burst all afire just by glaring at it. She may look human, but she ain't. Not really._ _She's a witch, that's for sure.  
_

  
_Oh, come off it. Everyone knows there ain't no such thing._

_World's changing every day. My pa said the same thing about the steam engine and look where we're working now.  
_

  
_  
_When Cid came to her and explained that she was to be undergoing what he called an "experimental procedure" to become a Magitech Knight, Celes couldn't help but think about the Emperor's monster in the shape of a girl, and wondered if they wouldn't whisper about her too, one day.

* * *

Celes sat on the operating table, swinging her bare feet against the side. Cid had come and held her hand for a little while — not that she needed the comforting, but it was a nice thing for him to do regardless. Cid was always kind to her, even though he didn't need to be. They’d been gearing up for this procedure for the better part of a year, and told her all about it. It didn’t frighten her — at least, not any more.

Eventually, Cid had to leave to prime the instruments. From somewhere in the depths of the laboratory, Celes could hear a noise that sounded like high-pitched screeching of tortured metal — some machine or other being put through its paces and complaining to the skies about it.

The room was bare except for a surgeon’s stand, with a metal floor with a drain in it. The place smelled like ozone and blood, and the walls seemed to have been scrubbed clean with metal wire brushes, leaving small scratches. Celes hopped off the gurney and ran her fingers along the scratches in the wall -- they were evenly spaced, vertical, and fit her fingers perfectly. She thought about the strange horned man in the glass tube, and wondered if they were the marks of a metal wire brush after all. 

Celes turned her head when she heard the soft scrape of a door being carefully opened. It was a hesitant sort of sound -- she knew it wasn't the doctors even before she turned.

It was a girl, dressed in a plain white shift, with a round owlish face and pale, downy hair that fell in tangled curls about her face.

The girl blinked. Celes stared at her, and the other girl cocked her head in a way that reminded Celes of an inquisitive pigeon. No, not a pigeon...a hawk. Something fierce and wild she'd only seen in books.

"Are you...?" Celes began, the words sticking in her throat. She suddenly thought back to all the rumors she'd heard -- fire and monsters wearing human forms -- and wondered if the strange little girl had come to kill her. The thought frightened Celes a bit, which bothered her. She was going to be a Magitech Knight, and fear was not part of the operation nor the training.

"Terra. That's my name. I'm not supposed to be out. But I heard someone talking and thought I could sneak in." The girl who called herself Terra smiled, and it was a stunningly genuine smile.

Celes had seen vanishingly few genuine smiles. She sat, looking at the girl, for a long time, trying to figure out what to say. 

"What are you doing here?" Terra said. Celes bit her lip. 

"Waiting." 

"Waiting for what?"

Celes considered this question for a moment, then settled on the truth. "For the doctors to come back and make me able to use magic." 

Terra frowned at this. "I didn't know that was a thing anyone could make you use," she said. She stepped forward, and seized Celes' hand without fanfare. Celes was so stunned by the action that she did not have any time to object before Terra had her hand cupped palm-up in hers. She bit her lip as Terra traced the lines of her palm with light, sharp-edged nails and thought of flame conjured from nothing. "No, no, it's not there," Terra murmured, and before Celes could think to ask what, precisely, she was looking for, Terra closed both hands around hers. 

"You're trembling," the other girl said. Celes jerked her hand away. 

"I'm not," Celes snapped. 

"It's all right," Terra said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "I hate this place too." 

Celes opened her mouth to say something, but the echo of footsteps rang in the hallway outside, and Terra disappeared through the other door as suddenly and quietly as she had arrived. The doctors arrived almost immediately afterwards with needles and knives and sleeping draughts, and Celes awoke with ice in her veins, wondering if she wasn't a monster now, too.

* * *

When Locke led Celes into the room for the first time to meet the others in Narshe, Terra knew she had seen her before. The recognition clawed at the back of her mind, like an unreachable itch -- a feeling she both relished and hated. 

Cyan was disgusted by the sight of her. Locke intervened on her behalf, as he did, and Edgar spoke up, and then Terra herself. Celes, who like any good general knew when to retreat, eventually slipped away to let them argue it out. Once the discussion had been whittled down to just the sad-eyed old swordsman and Locke, Terra followed. An echo of a memory was far more important than an argument that wasn't really hers. 

"They'll come around," Terra said. Celes turned around when she heard her voice, shaking the snow from her hair. "They trusted me." 

"It's different for you," Celes said. "You had no choice." 

"I wouldn't know." Terra looked at Celes, that insistant feeling tugging at the gap where her memory used to be -- a vast blankness stretching out the length of her whole life. "I don't remember anything at all from...from before. I sometimes wonder..." Terra stopped suddenly, and a long silence slid between them. 

"Go on," Celes prompted. Terra took a breath. 

"Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't a different person. Back then." 

"You weren't." 

Terra bit her lip. "We've met before," she said. She'd known it -- that was why she had followed Celes out into the snow in the first place, after all -- but it was still strange to hear Celes say it, to talk about things she had done herself in the past as though they had happened to a stranger.

"We were both very young, and it was very brief." Celes stepped forward, and much to Terra's surprised, wrapped her hands around hers. Terra could feel the long callouses on Celes' palms where her sword had rested as she turned Terra's palm upwards, tracing the lines of her hand with one rough finger. "You did something like this, and I got the impression you were looking for something, but the surgeons came in almost immediately after and I never found out what it was." 

Terra closed her eyes, relishing the feeling of a human hand in hers. It was comforting, but as unfamiliar as anything. She tried to imagine what Celes might have looked like as a child, and what she might have looked like herself, but they were both equally alien. 

"I'm sorry," Terra said. "I don't remember what I was looking for." 

Celes shrugged, but did not let go of her hand. "Maybe you'll figure it out someday." 

"Maybe," Terra said. "Or maybe I'll find something new to look for." 

Celes bit her lip, and Terra swore she felt her squeeze her hand before she turned away.


End file.
